I first thought the movie Frostbitten was a Swedish clone of 28 Nights, the American Arctic vampire tale.  As it was, Frostbitten did pre-date 28 Nights by a few years.  And they did share elements—aggressive arctic vampires and storyline gaps.  But 28 Nights is horror-romance.  Frostbitten is horror-comedy or comedy-horror. 

Now Scandinavian movies are still hard to come and not made in great quantity.  Besides ABBA DVDs, Frostbitten is the most prominent Swedish DVD I have.  And it is good. The production was very professional–it was shot in way northern Sweden.  And the plot was and is kinda neat—a vampire comedy that includes Nazis, teen rockers, and genetic testing.  The police are right out of Fargo or more likely Fargo was spot in Nordic impersonation.

The movie starts out like Cross of Iron. Slowly we catch up to the present day.  Here we have an arctic town filled with medical malfeasance, teenage drug use, and police way out of their league.  There is gore, but I found it pretty tame. Unofrtunately the movie ends just as the first night of horror gets started.

But there are great plot twists and a whole lot of one liners that make witty comedy.  One of the best features of the vampire disease is that animals talk to the vampire-humans.  No these vamps get spooked by animals spilling family secrets.  Unlike 28 Nights, Frostbitten slows at time, but the wait is worth it.  Rent it, buy it, or go to Sweden to see it.  It is the best comedy-horror since Young Frankenstein.

Few movies rise to the level of cheesiness as They Saved Hitler’s Brain.  Made in the 1950’s and 1960’s, this hobbled together classic masterpiece of junk has a kidnapped scientist, Hitler alive (head only), and a rinky dink nation with only one hotel.

It is bad, real bad. Creepiest of all is having a back seat Hitler–head only–menacing despite Hitler’s utter dependence of others.  No Boys from Brazil, this has madness all about.  Imagine the worst of mid century film making—and one of the century’s worst dictators—and you have (sadly) They Saved Hitler’s Brain.

Tough as he looks, Daniel Craig scores another for the British who dominate this category.  The current and most iron willed and cold hearted Bond, he plays a mean partisan in the movie Defiance.  I’d like to see him play Putin.  Craig can seem to do anything and everything except crack a smile.  He is not cuddly, but all action.  Carry on Dan.

This is a Vietnam War movie set after the War.  Like Rambo movies, this has action, in fact more mayhem then even Rambo can mix-up.  Except for a brief cameo of white westerners at the start of the movie, the movie is Chinese American and female Cambodian guerrillas versus Vietnamese.  Only a few of Chinese are military, the rest are thugs trading field service for commution of sentence.

Basically it is a suicide mission with the object to blow-up an arsenal left behind, by mistake.  Humor, martial arts, and plenty of ordinance demonstrations…Eastern Condors is one giant meat grinder. Sammo Hung helps to build a creditable martial arts ensemble. (Sammo is a buddy of Jackie Chan–they both studied under the same master).

Another one of those classic, exotic feature, a bit dated for the 1970’s, but enthralling for a youngster in the age before Internet and CGI.  This had the Indians rebelling against the colonial British, rich in high and mighty splendor.

The story concerns Rani of Jhansi, a queen of a princely state, fair, just, and not bad with whoop-ass size cutlery in her hands.  She is forced to take sides and the price of resistance gets pricey.  The story plays out as per the history books.  The violence is the tame 1950s style, but the music, costumes, and story is a magical mystery tour—one of those movies that got me turned on to visit India–somehow, sometime.

The film is virtually public domain and can be got at flea market cost, but also at full freight if not careful. Shop warily.

The Nazis are so hated that making “sympathetic” movies is a very delicate process. AFAMFWCM(an awkward title) is made in the vein of Das Boot and Stalingrad where the ordinary German puts on the uniform, goes to war, and suffers like countless other uniformed no matter the land.  AFAMFWCM goes straight from saying goodbye to the family at the station to riding the Russian prison train to deep Siberia.

Clement, the subject of the story, is determined to get home.  The coal mine where he works is pure hell.  Through grit, luck, and persistence he does break out.  Of course that is the easy part.  He is thousands of miles away from any even remotely friendly territory.  Germans are not exactly a popular group in 1945.  And beyond physical hurdles there are psychological barriers to cross.

Adding to the plot, there is a prison commandant who is just as determined to catch him.  The movie is long, sad, and epic in scope (despite focus on Clement). Flagged as a “we all were not hunting Jews” movie, it does have an angle to history rarely seen and sadly under understood.

This movie has neither visible dogs nor diamonds.  It does have Dolph Lundgren (aka “The Swedish Meatball”) in the lead role as a troubled macho man living and working in Mongolia. His life is a mixture of police line-ups, mob payoffs, and illegal fighting/betting.

He gets hired to provide security/protection to a fuzzy group of questionable characters interested in stealing a Buddhist Thangka (tapestry). Beyond some entertaining tradional Mongol singing/dancing, there is a series of gunfights and hand to hand fighting.  The movie seems to have run out of money as the movie was made.  Crudy acting, wide gaps in storyline, bare bone props…o.k. the mobile vehicular gunfights has some “excitement” quotient.  But this movie is a dog, a mongrel at that.

Dolph was planning on making a frnachise of the “Rambo-like” character.  After seeing the movie crash and burn, Dolph decided to run and hide.  Hideous, despite the coolness of the locale, this movie is ugly bad and watchable as a cheap thrill or for the 2 minutes of tradional Mongol dancing.

(This trainwreck was $3 from Big Lots)

Spring.  Sunny days. Cute flowers.  Unstoppable creatures.  Ants can be annoying.  And Hollywood has cut some wild footage of these picnic hustlers.

Them!:  One of the earliest ant themed horror movie.  With James Arness, Jim Whitmore, and Fess Parker, the cast are white lightning.  These ants are big, rip your camper apart big.  Residuals from the A-bomb lead to Them!.

Typical of the era, the movie includes a “documenarty short’ about ants.  Entertaining and cheesy, Them! is actually more high end then one might expect.

The Naked Jungle:  Two words: Charlton Heston.  The man takes on a couple hundred trillion little ants.  The movie slips between the glitter of Moses and the glamor of Omega Man.

Empire of the Ants:  Back to the big ants.  This 1970’s horrible horror has giant ants snacking on visitors at a Florida timeshare sales seminar.  And from there it only gets better—plaid leisure suit catharsis, penitent dialogue among the palms, and ants that have harnessed the local sugar business in what had to be a “hostile takeover”.  More Deep South creepiness for those who like watching ants reinstate slavery.

Ants!:  Definitely not a winner.  Lots of little ants lay seige to a northern California B & B.  True the B & B is up against a cliff.  But the ants are neither giant nor uncounted trillions.  Yet the humans are neither swift of foot or brain. A real loser of a film, best to be lost,

Last year you heard about my brother and his girlfriend (recently promoted to fiance) who works at Seattle Public Library.  The Library has an annual sale of “surplus” property–books, DVDs, and such.  They also have a Friends of…program for $10 a year.  The two merge when the Friends of get dibs before the sale goes public.  The price? Last year DVDs were a buck a piece.  This year (held in April versus September) the price went up to $1.50.  Yeah they be used.  But what a bargain!!!

Now my brother has seen my collection.  But he (and Amy) had to go on guts and instinct.  And they scored.  Only 2, maybe 3 were “dupes” (duplicates).

Below is the rundown on the DVDs, with commentary.

Ken Burn’s Civil War:  A classic documentary that Thomas was shocked had not been nabbed when he spotted it.  Going for $69.00 new, this pick alone was more than worth the resources expended in this year’s DVD rodeo.

Lidsville-The Complete Series:  A note first on “Series”, I get funky about having partial series.  There is a feeling of unfulfillment and I don’t need more of that.  That being said the shorter the “Series” the better likelihood the “Series” will be obtainable.  Lidsville is the type of series I like—a short run, but memorable.  Admittedly Lidsville is dated and not exactly Family Guy sophisticated.   It is 1970’s Sid & Marty Croft silliness with echos of The Munsters (Butch Patrick in the “kid” role).  Still the series is complete.

Now a word on what’s ahead.  Thomas and Amy managed to grab a plethora of diverse and wide ranging DVDs—Mongol, French, Telugu, Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Armenian, and English.

Them!: Classic 50’s horror about giant ants. Always good for a giggle.  Giant ants—right.

The Harder They Come:  In English, but essentially a Jamaican movie about a musician turned working class hero. 

Chi-hwa-seon:  Korean story of  “artist goes introspective”.

Khadak:  One of TWO Mongolian movies in the batch.  Mongolian movies don’t come cheap. (Note:  Amazon has raised significantly their DVD prices and wiped out their bargain section).

Mongol: Aptly named given its Mongolian language content.  Even more, a historical epic about those Mongols–1oth century movers and shakers.

Nenunnaanu:  This is a Telugu movie which is soooo cool given I studied the language in India.  What makes this real awesome is the movie is set in Vizag—the very city I lived and studied in.  Ok the story is standard fare.  But the references were right out of Jagadamba Junction.  Considering Tom and Amy knew not of what they were selecting—hot diggity damn!

The Last Voyage of the Lusitania/Sugihara/The Great War 1918:  Three awesome documentaries.  Not quite “The Civil War”, but important in their own right.

The Color of Pomegranates:  One of those once seen, often wished for…a truly deep and intense movie of Armenian kultur.  Made in 1969, when the rest of the world was in a purple haze, Pomegranates is the Soviet answer to Yellow Submarine and Me and My Arrow.  Watchable, yes. Understandable, depends on how you eat your pomegranate.

Battle of the Rails:  French, postwar look at the railroads and those who suffered keeping them from the Nazis.

Monsters, Marriage, and Murder in Manchvegas:   Considering Manchvegas (Manchester) is 40 miles from here and clear across the country from Seattle, I can see why few at the sale would even give it a first glance.  Once again, Tom and Amy, went by gut and scored a keeper.  There is a reason NH is not called Granitewood.

The above is a sampling.  Yes there were more.  Suffice it to say that this year’s haul was even more impressive than last year’s (and last year was a winner).  The Civil War alone made it worthwhile.

From the 1940s to the 1980s, Victor Mature was a lone wolf leading man cutting a suave figure through high and low movies.  China Doll was done at his midpoint of his career.  This movie, done in B/W, is set in WW2, yet produced in 1958.  It is a love story set war, and very little war to be seen, till the end.  Mature plays a pilot flying the Hump, shipping war materials around Asia facing danger within a  cultural circus.  He unknowingly picks up a house maid who falls in love with her.

Lots of cultural bridges must have crossed in making the film. Interracial couples were not exactly smiled upon back in 58′.  The movie even managed to take a swipe at “the commies” at the touching end of the movie.  I give credit to the makers as not many movies cover the Hump story.  An aging Ward Bond plays the practical (Chinese speaking) American priest.  There is also a wisecracking little Chinese kid in the mold of Shortround from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

This is a fun, historical love story.  You will not soon forget Mature’s eyebrows.  They are big enough to hide the Nationalist Chinese Air Force under.